Our Experts Have Ranked the Internet’s Top MLB Betting Sites

These Sites Are the Home Run of the Betting World

Baseball betting season is one of the best times of year for sports gamblers. Of all the major sports, baseball has the most games, the most analytics-friendly rules, and the underdogs win a higher percentage of their matchups than any other league.

What all of these variables mean is lots of opportunities to find value and turn a profit. But before you do that, you’ll need to find the best baseball betting sites. To make money betting baseball, you’ll need a book with a full range of games and wager types, good odds, and reliable, trustworthy service. We’ve scoured the internet and determined the following recommendations are the best baseball betting sites on the internet.

Selecting Legitimate Baseball Betting Sites

If you ever hope to have a productive baseball betting season, you’ll first need to make sure that you’re placing your bets on the right website. The internet is full of unethical betting operations and scam sportsbooks designed to take your money. That’s why we’ve done the research for you and located the best MLB betting sites online.

There are many variables that go into our recommendations. If you’d like a better idea of the types of things we examine when ranking online sportsbooks, you should take the time to read our specific website reviews. In the meantime, the following factors are several of the primary criteria we consider to ensure we supply our readers with only the most legit baseball betting sites.

History and Reputation

Our intention is to supply you with the best betting knowledge and a legit baseball betting site on which to use it. One of the first things we research when reviewing an online sportsbook is their history and reputation with previous customers.

Warning!

We don’t want to recommend sites that have previously been blacklisted, have let their gaming licenses lapse, or have a history of disappointing customers.

That’s why we comb through previous customers’ experiences and search through industry blacklists before passing a site on to our readers. One of the best ways to predict future actions is by studying past actions. This theory holds true for both handicapping baseball and choosing the best betting site.

Online sports betting is a nearly $50-billion-per-year industry. That kind of money brings all of the scammers and unethical businesses out of the shadows in an attempt to steal a piece of the action. This is the main reason we put so much time and energy into selecting our recommendations – to guarantee customers a rewarding gambling experience without the risk of being stolen from.

Reliable Customer Service

Another criterion that proves to be crucial for overall customer experiences is the quality of a site’s customer service department. We judge a betting site’s customer service by considering a few factors. First, the customer help area should be easy to locate with straightforward options and information.

Once there, ideally the page will include a frequently asked questions (FAQs) section, as well as contact information. Next, the customer service page should include several avenues available for contacting their helpdesk employees. Ideally, they will consist of a telephone number, an email address, and a live chat instant messaging option.

Before signing up with a betting site and placing your baseball wagers, it’s worth your time to test a site’s contact methods to verify that they’re tended to quickly. Call the numbers and make sure they’re answered and that it’s easy to have issues addressed. Send a test email, and time how long the company takes to respond. You can even test out the chat function. None of these require much effort, and you’ll feel much better about any future issues if you already know that they take customer service seriously.

Wide Variety of Wager Types

What makes baseball season so lucrative for sports bettors is the massive volume of games and the many wager types that allow you to maximize your knowledge. The baseball betting sites that we rank highly offer odds on all of the MLB games and allow gamblers to place a wide range of bets.

Important

An excellent site to use for betting baseball will enable customers to utilize run-line point spreads, five-inning odds, and all sorts of additional possibilities.

To be a successful sports gambler, you’ll need to be able to identify mispriced odds and capitalize on them. The more exotic or specific you can get with your wagers, the more you can hone in on a particular niche or specialty. If your only skill is predicting how many runs an away pitcher will give up in five innings of play, you need to be able to make that exact bet rather than wasting time trying to pick moneyline game winners.

The Best Odds

If our readers are to be profitable betting on baseball, they’ll need to have access to the best odds. The companies included in our trusted baseball gambling sites will offer odds that are competitive, fair, and consistent with the rest of the industry.

One of the primary benefits of placing your sports bets online is that you can commonly find better odds than their land-based competitors can provide. This is because brick-and-mortar operations require considerably more overhead to keep their lights on. Without the need to purchase land and pay a much more extensive staff, online betting sites can reduce the bookmaker’s advantage, meaning more favorable lines for you.

Bonuses and Loyalty Rewards Programs

You will also notice that our list of recommendations includes the various deposit or sign-up bonuses being offered to new customers by each site. With so much competition in the industry, bonuses and rewards programs are one of the foremost ways betting sites can compete for your business. These gifts can really add up, so they’re worth additional consideration when choosing a bookmaker.

The entry-level bonuses for signing up or depositing money typically come with lots of strings attached. They’ll frequently have high rollover requirements, for example. Regardless, free bets can help you test out different wagers or practice betting on new sports.

The real value is found in the loyalty rewards programs. Legit betting sites will track a user’s betting habits and calculate how much money they commonly gamble to determine what kind of perks and prizes they will offer. Your average sports gambler can expect to earn points that they can redeem for merchandise, gift cards, or even cash back over time. High rollers will be offered everything from vacation packages to automobiles; the sky is the limit.

Beginner’s Guide to Betting on Baseball

Once you’ve found the perfect site on which to bet on Major League Baseball, it’s time to start placing your bets. But before you can, you’ll need to know the various types of wagers available for baseball betting and what they mean for you. There are many different approaches to betting on MLB games, some of which are common in all sports gambling and some that are specific to this sport.

You’ll also want to form a solid foundation of knowledge about the sport itself. It helps to understand the different rulesets the individual leagues have, how the season is scheduled, and what variables you need to consider when placing a bet on baseball. Once you understand the gambling terminology and the ins and outs of the sport, we’re sure you’ll find baseball betting to be one of the most rewarding forms of sports gambling.

If you’re brand new to the sport, here are a couple of fundamental factors to remember when forecasting a game:

Each team has a unique stadium with site-specific dimensions that affect pitching and hitting. Know if a stadium benefits pitchers or hitters before placing your bet

The starting pitcher is the most important position in the game. It’s also the variable that the majority of the betting public bases their picks on

Travel plays a critical role in team performance

There are umpire stats available online at websites like Rotowire.com. An umpire’s strike zone significantly influences the amount of scoring and is vital information for totals bets

In the National League, the pitchers have to take at-bats. In the American League, pitchers never bat; their place in the lineup is replaced by a designated hitter

Bullpen pitching is commonly overlooked but can be every bit as important as starting pitching

Types of Bets

The majority of traditional sports wagers are available for betting on baseball. You have the option to create parlay cards, make futures bets, bet the moneyline, or gamble on the total number of runs scored, for instance. But there are also additional types of wagers that are unique to baseball.

One baseball-specific wager that you will find is called the run line. These bets apply a 1.5-run handicap to the total score in either direction. The underdog receives 1.5 runs, while the favored team gives them up, which is why their number is expressed as –1.5.

You also have the option of betting on partial games. Since starting pitchers rarely complete the game, bookmakers give you the option of buying odds exclusively on the innings you expect the pitcher to be playing. You’ll frequently see bets on either the total number of runs or the winning team through only 4 ½ or 5 innings, in addition to the complete contest.

Baseball Betting Tips

Betting on baseball is all about understanding which factors will impact the outcome of the contest. You’ll need to consider the strength of the pitching, how the umpire calls balls and strikes, the type of stadium, and both teams’ recent travel schedule. All of these things play a role, and predicting how they’ll all blend to influence the game is how you make money.

What’s great about baseball is that every statistic is counted and recorded. The sport isn’t much of a team game. Instead, it’s a series of individual contests that sometimes overlap but often don’t. For example, when a player is batting, there’s nothing his teammates can do to assist him. What matters is how the hitter plays against left- or right-handed pitchers, what type of ball they hit best, how they perform in different parks, and numerous other variables, all of which are tracked and available online at sites like Baseball-Reference.com.

Baseball Betting Strategy

The best baseball handicappers have a strategy for making their picks. There are all sorts of betting systems and procedures that can be used to produce winning choices when gambling on baseball. Many of these involve pairing a structured staking plan with games that match a specific set of criteria.

Gambling strategies can be as rudimentary or scientific as you want them to be. For baseball, they are most effective when they consider many factors, especially since valuable data is so readily available. If you’re hoping to turn a profit in the long run, you’ll most likely be implementing a betting strategy sooner rather than later.

Essential Baseball Articles

With its 162-game season and the data-rich nature of the game, baseball is the ideal sport to gamble on for handicappers. For the most part, the competition is built on numerous individual statistics that are easy to track and analyze. The same concepts that made Moneyball possible and Billy Beane famous also help sports bettors to identify juice lines and make smart bets.

Here are some additional articles to help beginners find success when betting on baseball:

Additional Sports Betting Articles

Some betting principles apply to all forms of sports gambling. No matter what sport that you’re betting on, it will always be necessary for you to utilize bankroll management and stick to a predetermined staking plan. Staying disciplined with your betting finances will help you avoid many of the pitfalls of problem gambling. It will also keep you from spending more than you intend and from chasing losses.

It’s also vital that you understand what you’re looking for when placing a sports bet. A beginner’s mistake is to think successful handicappers are merely picking the winning team. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In actuality, they are making predictions based on each team’s probability of winning and then comparing those numbers to the odds, which carry an implied probability. If a side is deemed to have a better chance of winning than the lines suggest, that bet holds positive value and is worth making.

You’ll also notice that odds are expressed in a wide variety of ways. Moneyline odds will be presented in positive or negative three-digit numbers that represent both the degree by which either team is favored and the earnings you may expect either way. Decimal odds are most commonly used in Europe, and these calculate the total payout, meaning both the winnings and the amount that was staked. Fractional odds are usually applied to futures bets and are expressed as fractions.

We go into more detail about all of these tips in the following dedicated articles:

About the Sport of Baseball

Despite Major League Baseball being exclusive to Northern America, the sport itself spreads much further. The game is a way of life in Latin America, where a large percentage of the best players in the game get their start. It is also played professionally at a high level in Korea and Japan.

Baseball has a long, rich history. The sport has existed for centuries and seen numerous legendary players turn in Hall of Fame careers, watched miraculous plays executed to perfection, and observed historical stadiums come and go. As the game has evolved, some leagues have been disbanded and/or merged, enormous scandals have occurred, and rules have been altered to fit the times better.

You could dedicate your life to studying the history of the sport and never run out of material. If you’d like to get started, here are some articles specifically about the international game of baseball:

Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball is the highest level of the sport in the world. The professional league is located in North America, with all of the teams except the Toronto Blue Jays calling the United States home. It was initially created when two separate entities, the American League and National League, merged to become one.

What’s interesting is that the two leagues still have slightly different rulesets. During interleague play and the World Series, the home team gets to play by their league’s rules, and the away team is forced to adapt. This makes for intriguing matchups and creative tactics.

The 115-year-old league consists of thirty teams organized into two leagues with three divisions apiece. Major League Baseball has been home to many of the most influential athletes in our country’s history, including Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and Hank Aaron. Likewise, it has also seen its fair share of scandal and controversy.

For more in-depth articles about specific aspects of Major League Baseball, please read our additional articles on the subject:

The Future of Baseball

Baseball has gone through several different eras and levels of popularity during its long history. It was once the most popular game in the United States, at which point it earned the nickname “America’s Pastime.” After a lengthy strike decimated viewership numbers, the sport was reborn thanks to a steroid-fueled home-run race.

In the post-steroid-era world, the league is once more trying to regain its footing at the top of American sports. With football appearing doomed pending more concussion and brain-health research, could baseball once again be the United States’ preferred game? Only time will tell.

To read more about the future of the game, see our article on the matter: